February 27, 2006

Michael Joyce: a Tribute

When National Review's John Miller wrote A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America it gave him the opportunity to talk at length with Michael Joyce who ran the Olin Foundation before moving to the Bradley Foundation. Miller briefly collects a few of Joyce's accomplishments.

To have a glimpse into Joyce's influential mind I found this essay "On Self-Government" which attacks the progressive liberal project of the 20th Century. He concludes:

And so today, when progressivism says to us that there is no nature’s God, and so no divinely inscribed "self-evident truths" in the human soul, let us reply that without such truths, there is no sure foundation for human freedom and self-government. When progressivism insists that the human being is utterly free to create or express himself without limits, let us reply that "there can be no moral freedom without moral responsibility and accountability," and no political freedom without civic virtue. When progressivism insists that family, neighborhood, church, and voluntary association are parochial and repressive constraints on our self-expression, let us reply that only through such institutions can we as free people "exist, develop, and seek the higheer purposes of life in concert with others," and come to a proper understanding and practice of self-government.

With our past as the foundation of our hope, let us embrace this new struggle over the meaning of self-government, as the means by which we may once again refresh our flagging spirits at the wellsprings of our national character. Not daring, at such a critical moment, to rely solely upon our own arguments and devices, let us join Pope John Paul II in his prayer that "our country will experience a new birth of freedom, freedom grounded in truth and ordered to goodness."

"Michael S. Joyce, R.I.P." [via Charlie Sykes]